Chapter 12
Cody
A'Vanti grimaces beside me, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She plucks at the front of her shirt, shaking it, and a small cascade of fine golden sand pours out.
"I am itchy," she announces with a scowl. She reaches behind her back, trying to scratch between her shoulder blades. "I feel as though the entire desert followed us inside."
I bite back a grin. There's something endearing about watching someone who carries herself with such effortless grace waging a losing battle against sand. "Yeah, I've got sand in unmentionable places."
She gives me a withering look, the kind that would send most people scrambling to fix whatever they'd done wrong. But I catch the tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth.
"I want to bathe," she says, turning toward the glowing pool. Steam curls off the surface, pale and lazy. "I need to get this sand off my skin before I lose my mind."
My brain helpfully supplies an image of A'Vanti slipping into that water, and I have to look away for a second to get my thoughts in order.
Because the pool is right there, shimmering and warm and inviting. And she's talking about bathing. And we are very much alone, with a sandstorm sealing us in and no one else for miles.
"I can, uh—" I gesture vaguely toward the shelter. "I can go sit in there. Give you some privacy. Or I can head back up toward the cave entrance if you want more privacy."
A'Vanti goes still. She turns to look at me. Her eyes study my face with an intensity that makes my pulse kick up a notch. It's the kind of look that sees past the surface, past the easy jokes and the grin, down to whatever's underneath.
"Cody." She says my name like she's testing the weight of it. "I think we are past that."
My mouth goes dry.
She takes a step closer. The lantern light catches the fine scales along her cheekbones, turning them into tiny points of gold. "If you were standing at a Presenting Ceremony," she says, her voice low and steady, "I would choose you."
The words land somewhere deep in my chest, in a place I didn't know was waiting for them. I swallow hard. My heart jackrabbits beneath my ribs like it's trying to break free.
I take a beat. Because this matters. This matters more than anything has mattered in a long time, and I need her to know that I'm not just riding the moment. That this isn't the cave or the storm or adrenaline talking.
"A'Vanti." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "Do you really mean that?"
She holds my gaze, unwavering.
"Because I need you to know something." I close the distance between us, stopping just short of touching her. "I'm all in. I have been for a while now. I know what I want, and it's you. Not just tonight. Not just while we're stuck in a cave. You."
Her guarded, searching expression melts. She reaches up and cups my face in her hands, her palms cool and smooth on my jaw, and she kisses me.
Her mouth finds mine with certainty, with intention, and I wrap my arms around her and pull her close and kiss her back with everything I've been holding in for months.
When she draws back, her eyes are luminous. "I am sure."
Then she gives me a grin that, on any other face, I would classify as wicked. On A'Vanti, it's devastating. Her hands drop to the collar of my shirt. "Here," she murmurs, her fingers finding the top fastener. "Let me help you out of these."
She works the closures with deft, deliberate movements, peeling the sand-dusted fabric away from my shoulders.
I stand very still, not trusting myself to move, watching her face as she concentrates.
When the shirt falls free, she folds it with the same careful precision she brings to everything and sets it aside.
Her fingers brush the skin of my chest, light and curious, tracing the line of my collarbone. I shiver, and it has nothing to do with the cave air.
"Your turn," I say, and it comes out closer to a croak than actual speech.
A'Vanti unwinds her wrap first, the fabric sliding off her shoulders and pooling in her hands. She folds it and sets it beside my shirt. Then she turns her back to me and gathers her hair, sweeping it over one shoulder to bare the fastenings of her tunic.
I take the hint. My fingers find the closures at the back of her neck, and I work them open one by one, trying to keep my hands steady. The tunic loosens, and I ease it down over her shoulders, the fabric whispering against her scales as it falls away.
Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of her.
The lantern light catches every curve and plane of her form.
The fine overlapping pattern of her scales runs down her spine like hammered gold, shifting from pale amber at her shoulders to a deep, burnished gold along the small of her back. She is astonishing.
When she turns to face me, every word I've ever known leaves my head.
Her body is lean and long, built like a blade.
She is narrow through the shoulders and waist, with the faintest rounding at her hips.
Her breasts are small and high, the nipples a shade darker than the surrounding scales, like tiny coins of burnished copper.
She is not built like a human woman. The proportions are different, the lines sharper, something almost androgynous in the shape of her frame.
None of her differences matter because she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and my brain has completely stopped working.
We help each other with the rest of our clothes, and the quiet practicality of it steadies me.
Then A'Vanti steps back and looks at me.
Really looks at me. Her gaze travels slowly over my body with the same careful attention she gives a building she's assessing, methodical and thorough. Her gaze traces my shoulders, my chest, the plane of my stomach, then drifts lower, and stays there.
My body responds to that stare with zero subtlety.
I feel myself stir and harden under the heat of her attention, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.
A desert worm joke floats through my mind, but I clamp down on it so hard my back teeth ache.
There are moments in a man's life when it is not the time to be a goober, and this is one of them.
When her eyes finally travel back up to mine, there's a heat in them that wasn't there before. A gaze that is approving and unhurried and very, very deliberate.
A'Vanti takes my hand and laces her fingers through mine.
"Follow me," she says, and pulls me toward the water's edge.
The pool stretches before us, pale blue and faintly luminous, steam drifting across its surface in slow drifts. Up close, I can see the sandy bottom sloping gently downward.
A'Vanti pauses at the water's edge.
"It was in this pool," she says, "that I participated in my naming and caste-choosing ceremony."
Her gaze has gone somewhere far away.
"Within these waters, I chose the direction of my life.
" She gazes out at the glowing surface. "Before the ceremony, I was just Vanti.
A girl with no title, unsure of her path in life.
I knelt in this water, and I chose to join the Artist caste.
" She touches the base of her throat. "That is when I added the A to my name. The designation of my caste."
"A'Vanti," I say, her name feeling different on my tongue now.
She smiles, slow and a little wistful. "I am glad my people are doing away with the caste system.
It served us once, but it also limited us.
No one should have to choose their entire life's path when they are that young.
" She looks at me. "But I do not regret my choice.
The Artist caste gave me my architecture.
It gave me Brishar. It gave me this moment with you. "
She squeezes my hand.
"Come."
We step into the water together.
The warmth hits me first. The water is denser than I expect, soft and almost slippery on my skin, like liquid silk.
It seems to hum through me, a low, tingling heat that seeps through muscle and settles into bone.
My feet sink into the fine sandy bottom, and with every step forward, the water rises, climbing my calves, my thighs, until it is up to my waist. The minerals feel like they're gently fizzing against my skin.
Every ache I didn't know I was carrying begins to dissolve. Even the tension in my shoulders from wrestling the ship through the storm begins to ease. All of it melts away, drawn out by the water.
A'Vanti wades deeper beside me, and I watch the water rise along her body, lapping at her golden scales.
In the blue-white glow of the pool, she is breathtaking.
Her hair drifts around her shoulders, darkening from gold to deep amber where it touches the water, and the steam curls around her like something alive.
She looks like a figure out of myth – the kind you'd find painted on the wall of an ancient temple.
She looks like home. I don't know when that happened, but it did.
"You know," I say, trying to lighten the mood, "I've already got a second name. Goober."
A'Vanti's laugh rings off the cavern walls, happy and free, and the sound of it fills the whole space. "Yes," she says, still grinning. "You are a goober sometimes."
I spread my hands. "See? Already named. Cody 'Goober' Johnson. Very distinguished."
Her laughter fades. She looks at me with those luminous eyes, and I feel the shift in the air between us.
"You are also vel'shar," she says.
"I don't know what that means."
"I know." She steps closer, the water rippling around her waist. "Kneel."
There's a command in her voice that makes it impossible to do anything but obey. I lower myself into the water, my knees finding the sandy bottom of the pool. The water rises up my chest, silken and tingling, and I stare up at her.
A'Vanti cups her hand under my chin and tilts my head gently back.
The cavern ceiling stretches above me. The shafts of daylight that once lit the cave have grown dim and thin.
But she fills the rest of my vision, golden and radiant, as though she's kept all the light for herself.
She looks at me with an expression that makes my throat tight.
She cups her hands together, scooping water from the pool, and lifts them above my head. The water pours over me in a slow cascade, running down my face, over my shoulders, dripping from my hair.
A'Vanti's eyes find mine and hold them.
"A vel'shar is a protector," she says. "Someone who stands guard without being asked. Who protects without demanding recognition."
Her hands scoop more water, pouring it over me again. The heat runs down my spine.
"You carried me out of that prison when I could not walk.
" Her voice is quiet but steady. "You brought me books about buildings because you understood what I had lost. You waited outside my therapy sessions with that sweet grin, helping to make me laugh when I had forgotten how.
" Her fingers trail through my wet hair.
" You brought me to Brishar because you saw that I needed it.
You flew through a sandstorm to keep me safe.
And you never ask for anything in return.
" She presses her palm flat against my chest and meets my gaze. "You are my vel'shar."
She slides her hands to my shoulders, her palms resting there.
"You are the vel'shar of my body," she says. "Of my feelings. And of my heart."
A wall cracks open inside me. One I've been holding together with jokes and grins and easy confidence for longer than I want to admit. One that has been waiting for exactly this, to be seen fully and chosen anyway.
I rise from the water, scooping A'Vanti into my arms in one motion.
She gasps, her hands flying to my shoulders, and then I'm kissing her.
I kiss her with everything, all the months of wanting and waiting and holding back.
All the words I haven't said. All the promises I want to make.
I pour it into this kiss, and she meets me beat for beat, her arms wrapping around my neck, her body pressed flush with mine, warm and wet and perfect.
When we finally break apart, we're both breathless.
"Vel'shar," I murmur against her lips. "I like the sound of that."
"It suits you." Her voice is husky. "Better than goober."
"I don't know… I am still a goober."
She laughs, and I set her down gently, the water swirling around us. We don't let go of each other.
What follows is slow and tender and unhurried.
We take our time in the pool, washing away the grit and sand from each other's skin.
My hands trace the patterns of her scales, learning the way they lie smooth in one direction and catch slightly in the other.
She maps the unfamiliar terrain of my skin with the same careful attention, her fingertips trailing along the lines of muscle, pausing at old scars and tracing them with a light touch.
"What happened here?" she asks, her thumb brushing a raised line across my ribs.
"Trampoline. I was twelve and convinced I could do a backflip. I came down wrong, almost bounced off my face instead of my feet, and landed in a chain-link fence."
"Did you ever manage the backflip?"
"No. But I did manage to almost give my mother a heart attack."
She laughs into my skin, and I feel it everywhere.
I pour water over her hair and work the sand free with careful fingers, and she makes a sound low in her throat that nearly undoes me. She does the same for me, her nails scratching lightly across my scalp, and I understand why people traveled across Ceraste for these springs.
With every touch, the heat between us builds, like a rising tide. Her hands linger longer. My breath comes shorter. I catch her looking at me with golden eyes gone dark, her lips parted, and my chest pulls tight as a bowstring.
"A'Vanti," I say, her name is like a benediction on my lips.
She responds by pressing her mouth to the curve of my shoulder, and that's it. That's the end of my restraint.
I scoop her out of the water, one arm under her knees, the other around her back, and she wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face against my throat.
She's warm and wet and clinging to me, and I carry her through the shallows, water streaming off us both, the cave air raising goosebumps on my skin.
I carry her to our shelter, ducking through the entrance, and lay her down on the nest of mattress pads and blankets we'd arranged earlier. The lantern light filters through the shelter's walls, casting everything in a weak amber glow.
A'Vanti pulls me down to her, and the rest of the world disappears. The storm above us, the sand, the distance between our two worlds. All of it is gone. There is only this. Only her.
Only us.